Reclaiming our lives through more mindful use of technology
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Humans have become increasingly vulnerable to technology engineered to grab our attention, pulling us away from more meaningful and fulfilling moments and interactions in our lives. Can technology itself be part of the solution? Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Caroline Cadwell, co-founder and CEO of Unpluq, a recent graduate of the Techstars Seattle accelerator program. The startup offers an app, subscription service, and keychain tag designed to help people become more conscious and mindful about their use of smartphones, social media, and other addictive apps and services.
Related links:
Rational Overrides: Influence Behavior Beyond Nudging — research that helped to inspire Unpluq's approach.
Could You Live Without a Smartphone? — TedX talk by Anastasia Dedyukhina of Consciously Digital, who is referenced by Caroline Cadwell on the episode.
Our favorite startup pitches from Techstars Seattle Demo Day
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We talked about this briefly before but how do you pronounce the name of the company? |
| 0:06.5 | Unplugged. As if it were a G. Yeah, we haven't formally made a decision about this but that's how I say it. |
| 0:15.4 | I figure we'll get enough momentum out there of people reading and seeing about it you know well well now they're going to know |
| 0:19.7 | it's unplug because they're going to listen to your podcast. It's going to be out there. |
| 0:23.0 | The millions and trillions of people. |
| 0:25.0 | I've got it, I used it last night. |
| 0:28.0 | I'm going to reference it. |
| 0:30.0 | It made me read as opposed to get stuck on a YouTube. |
| 0:33.7 | Did it make you read or did it help you make a decision to read? |
| 0:37.4 | Oh, I love it. |
| 0:38.8 | I'm glad Curtis recording this because that's exactly the point. Welcome to GeekWire, from GeekWire. |
| 0:47.0 | In Seattle, I'm Todd Bishop. |
| 0:51.0 | We are coming to you from Seattle where we get to report each |
| 0:54.4 | day on what's happening around us in tech, science, and innovation. What happens here |
| 0:58.9 | matters everywhere and every week on this show we talk about some of the most |
| 1:02.2 | interesting stories we've been covering and in this case some of the most interesting technology we've been using. |
| 1:08.0 | I'm pleased to be joined today by Caroline Cadwell, CEO of Unplug. That's a startup that just recently graduated from the |
| 1:15.5 | Tech Star Seattle Accelerator program. It makes an app and a keychain tag that |
| 1:20.9 | helped people be more conscious about how they use their smartphones and |
| 1:25.0 | especially the addictive social media apps on their phones. |
| 1:28.8 | Caroline, it's great to see you and great to have you on the show. |
| 1:31.6 | Thanks so much for having me. |
... |
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